Slinky Malinki is a great name for a cat, it really is.
It’s my older brother’s birthday today. Happy birthday big bro. Here is something cool from your year of birth.
In odd game-to-media adaptation news:
Ridley Scott’s movie based on Monopoly – the plot! (Aside: Check out this Cornell University study revealing that between 2% and 20% of Monopoly games can never end!)
What’s the next project for Dave Gibbons, genius artist best known for making Watchmen with Alan Moore? How about a new adventure based on everyone’s second-favourite built-in Windows procrastination tool, Minesweeper!
(Man, I’ve just realized that the Asteroids movie would be perfect for Michael Bay. The source material literally consists of nothing but big rocks exploding, and then a spaceship exploding at the end. PERFECT.)
Whoa. Some movie exec thought it would be a good idea to get H.R. Giger to redesign the Batmobile. Not the best idea actually
Hey, write your own Ain’t It Cool News movie review with this handy template!
Awesome clip of Mos Def, Black Thought and Eminem freestyling (in the “I’m cool” mode of Cypher, not the “you suxxor” mode of Battling)
For anyone visiting London: the ultimate uncluttered tube map. I might have used this…
Reading the Maps has been knocking out incredibly content-rich, thoughtful posts about events in NZ and around the world. Check out this response to the scandal of students dressing up like Nazis, and this wry discussion of whether Pope Ratzinger is actually a Marxist. Essential reading for the NZ crowd, I reckon.
And finally… would you buy a used car from this Cuban gynaecologist?
Marie Antoinette Video
Put this up on LJ the other day – a video trailer for the Marie Antoinette night, showing lots of clips from the August show. We look awesome. There’s a few changes this time around, including a new actress in the Marie Antoinette role due to our last one getting a TV gig, but that’s the feel of it. Who knew Wellington had so many French aristocrat costumes?
Much acknowledgement of Steve Leon, of SpringTV, for filming and assembling this trailer. I’ve been taking advantage of Steve’s skills and goodwill in various domains for about a decade and a half now. If you know anyone who needs some filming done, hire him!
Second rehearsal today. The script changes all played well at our read-through Tuesday, including a couple of fairly major adjustments – definitely a stronger, tighter show that plays more to the strengths of the concept. Very happy.
Right, off to morning meeting to decide on some other matters including what might be our next show! And then have to do normal work too 🙂
Neuromancer – 25 years on
NZ political life continues to be ridiculous (media training protip for Hone Harawira: when you are giving an apology, do not issue the opinion that another politician should be shot), global climate change progress continues to flounder in a commons dilemma, the US right wing continues to devour itself, and the Breakers continue to suffer without Kirk Penney. So I don’t have much to say about any of that.
Instead, I get to write a 25-year-anniversary reconsideration of Neuromancer, because I read it by the pool in Thailand. Here’s the review:
Yep, still good, and I understand it much better now.
Not that I read it when it first came out, of course, I was only eight. Neuromancer is about a dude who wants to live in cyberspace, but he got kicked out because he screwed over the wrong person. The first chunk of the book is straight-up Noir, then it switches seamlessly into a Caper story. It seems an odd sort of book to have changed the world; coming back to it, its narrative seems more contained than ever, smaller and more of an inward spiral. But its a smart and pleasing read. It’ll still be in circulation in a hundred years, and William Gibson will no doubt be bemused by that, but why not?
The two 25-anniversary articles to read are these:
Mark Sullivan writes about what it got right (e.g. the web), what it got wrong (e.g. AIs).
Joe McNeilly at GamesRadar gives an interesting overview of the book in its context and its legacy.
And this site is a good hub for more info.
Diamond Necklace: Back Again
The Affair of the Diamond Necklace is coming back to Wellington in December.
There was an August show, which I’ve written about before. We’re back for another go Saturday December 12. A full evening of interactive entertainment including Vector Orchestra performance and a very nice meal. Will be an excellent night I’m sure!
We’ve been tightening things up, learning the lessons of last time out – a few script changes, etc. Rehearsals for the return version kick off tonight – this time I’m leading rehearsals, another new experience for me! But looking forward to seeing the team again. It’s an excellent bunch of people.
More information at the Eklektus website. Including a few photos, including me in a white wig.
RNZ Ballet: Peter Pan
Last Weds went to see Peter Pan: The Ballet Experience, from the Royal New Zealand Ballet, thanks to dear Felice my grandmother (who bought the tickets and sat next to me) and my mother (who double-booked herself so leaving a ticket free for me).
Great fun it was, a lot more like theatre than the ballet I’ve seen in the past. The design of the show was amazing, and the choreography (which at least one reviewer somewhere described as Russell Kerr’s greatest work) was inventive, engaging, and so effective at storytelling that words were unnecessary. The cast were all great, although I was disappointed we landed the only evening performance where Hook wasn’t played by Sir Jon Trimmer, the septuagenarian national treasure!
If I was somewhat more inclined to ramble on self-indulgently this morning, I’d write about whether we don’t generally under-value familiar stories. I appreciated how everyone in the theatre knew how the story went, even the very little children (of whom there were many). One small but notable change was to make the children’s ‘Nana’, a dog in the original (and the Disney version), a human nanny – one member of our party was disappointed!
It of course ended as the original play did, with the Darling family re-united and Peter forever apart. No allusions to the deeply strange final chapter of the novel (which, it should be remembered, was written after the play) where Peter returns a year later and has no memory of Captain Hook or Tinkerbell, and assumes the latter has probably died; Peter goes on to visit through the generations and take away Wendy’s female descendants in succession to Neverneverland. It’s odd, and the final line really underlined the oddness of the whole story: “…thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.”
Fireworks Linky
Yesterday I listened carefully to the fireworks. They were very loud. But I was working so I didn’t see anything. Listening was actually quite fun though, once I realized what they were and that the world wasn’t ending.
Celebrate the fact that the world isn’t ending with these educational linky experiences!
82-yo Ralph Stanley singing “O Death”, in sight of his brother’s grave, asking death to pass him by another year. (got this one from Making Light, I recall)
MightyGodKing photoshops some board games boxes so their titles are more honest.
Buncha Stanford students went to the Galapagos Islands and presented their ruminations on evolution through the medium of hippity-hop music. Both sublime and ridiculous.
Did ya see these Facebook updates from superheros? (Each update can be clicked through to context if you don’t get the reference, too, so everyone can play!)
Liu Bolin – the Invisible Man! Amazing stuff.
Watched some of Pulp Fiction not too long ago. It holds up well, though the scenes between Bruce Willis’ boxer and his girlfriend were even annoyinger, and the script really does use the N-word more than it needs to. But one thing it did have was acutely smart sound design, which is maybe why this works so well: music created out of Pulp Fiction audio samples.
Karen Healey explains why Tessa Duder’s Alex books were so great. NZ teen fiction classics that I’ve never read, but I expect a lot of readers have.
I’m kinda enamoured of the Dangerous Minds blog at the moment – exploring lots of cool stuff. Like these animated stereoviews of Japan from around the turn of last century. Like the artificial hymen. And Tom Lehrer! Worth adding to your regular visits, I reckon.
And how about this list of true historical swordswomen?
And finally… oh man, this is the internettiest thing ever: unused Prince tickets.
Writing Update: October
Regarding tne short-stories target for the year, I’m on track. I have eleven complete stories drafted and one more in progress, with two months to go. Note that there’s still a ways before I hit target, as the original plan was to only count stories as done when I am comfortable submitting them places. I’m only at that point with a couple of these. So there’s editing binge coming.
Here are the titles, just because:
– “The Tape”
– “Buckets”
– “Babel”
– “The Twelve Times I Drank Too Much”
– “Lift Story”
– “The Apotheosis of Melvin Rameka”
– “Inappropriate Boss”
– “The Intervention Upstairs”
– “The Confession”
– “Box Takes A Honeymoon”
– “Perfectly Right”
In progress:
– “Walking story”
Note that “walking story” is one of the really early ones that I wrote and then decided was unsalvageable. Well, I think I’ve figured it out. This revision keeps the characters, the critical incident, and about 20% of the opening sequence. Still working on it.
“The Beast” comic ticks along. Met with artist yesterday. She’s done with exams shortly and can then start working for me like a galley slave. *plots and plans*
Sinking energy into revised script for “Affair of the Diamond Necklace”. More on that soon. Spent half an hour today chewing over one line of dialogue – it really needs to drop heavy, and it was defeating me. Think I solved it though. Might change mind tomorrow.
“Ron the Body” er. Yes, well. Everyone knows it will never be published I think I will burn it yes I will burn it
Still noodling on “Lament” role-playing game idea.
C’est tout. [Last writing update]
Prof. Garry’s Inaugural
Yesterday attended the inaugural Professorial lecture of Maryanne Garry.
Maryanne started at Victoria University in 1996, which was when I met her, taking her 3rd year class on memory. It was a revelation. Maryanne studied under Beth Loftus and brought with her an extremely lucid presentation of memory issues, namely the unreliability of memory. Much of her research has a focus on false and incorrect memories and what it means to say “I remember”. She quickly got a reputation as a great teacher and a fierce driver of student research. (Stuck to her door at the moment is a bit of student feedback saying something like “Dr Garry is the best lecturer I’ve ever had, she is funny and her lectures are interesting and she also terrifies me so I always pay attention”.)
Inaugural lectures are great. They’re a chance for the new Professor to give a good summary of their work, an overview suitable for a non-specialist audience. The scope of them is really appealing to me. Academic research is always bogged down in detail, because it has to be – the details are crucial. But in an inaugural, there’s the space to zoom out a bit and deliver some solid hits in the clearest way possible. The tone is also always positive and celebratory and a reflection of the academic’s personality. (I remember with fondness the excellently-titled inaugural by David Finkelstein, “I played frisbee with Jesus”. This title was not a metaphor, either, he meant it literally.)
Maryanne’s was neat. Interspersed with lots of digs at the Republican party and George W. Bush (she may have been here for over a decade but her passion for her nation’s politics is undimmed) was a swift trip through three fascinating areas of research.
First was the imagination inflation research (a lot of which was done with Stef Sharman – Maryanne went to a lot of trouble in her address to call out and thank her students). This line of research was just getting underway when I was kicking around Vic doing honours, and it’s since become a pretty solid line of work. Basic message: when you imagine something that might have happened to you, you become more confident that it actually did happen to you. That’s powerful stuff.
The second area she called “the dangers of photoshop”. This research, largely with Kim Wade (known to some around these parts as “wife of Alastair Galloway” – yes, that Kim you guys), found that if you show people a fake photo of kid-them doing something, they very quickly become confident that it did indeed happen, and their accounts become very detailed and convincing. Apparently a common response to being debriefed that it wasn’t real was “whoa, how did you do that? I remember it so clearly!”
The third area is with lots of people and still in early stages, and it’s something quite startling – I’m going to describe it like this: people become more confident about statements if there’s a photo with the statement, even if the photo shouldn’t matter. Like, “the Pope rode a camel” – people are more likely to agree that the Pope did indeed ride a camel if there’s a picture of the Pope not riding a camel. I’m over-simplifying a complex set of data to the point of parody, but if you walk away thinking “photos have an influence over our judgments that they shouldn’t rationally have” then you’ve got the main point.
It was good stuff, with a lovely conclusion about how memory is really about reducing the space between people, about social connectivity. She got a lot of laughs and she got to show off some important research and, yeah, it was good times. So, congrats Professor! Readers who know Maryanne should take this as an excuse to take a wee dram in her honour. I did.
Rasslin’
Some action from last year’s Halloween show
Just like last year, I rolled up with an enthusiastic posse to watch some rasslin’ at the Kiwi Pro Wrestling’s Halloween Howl extravaganza.
Highlight, of course, was seeing the redoubtable Doctor Diablo open the night trying to bring down the fearsome Brute, but even a spectacular moonsault off the top rope did not avail the man with a PhD in Pain!
After that fight I’d shouted myself hoarse already so I was left just gesturing for the rest of the night. It was heaps of fun.
I think once a year is about my speed for these things, but I fully intend to be back again next Halloween. Hooooo!
(Also, big news: the KPW lads and lasses have announced an upcoming series on free-to-air Prime TV called Off The Ropes! Looking forward to that – Sunday November 15!)
Day of the Dead
It was getting cold as we wound our way up the hill. We didn’t have a place to stay, and intended to stay up all night, as most of the Mexicans were clearly planning. In the cemetery, a small flat space chunked out of the hillside and crowded with plots, locals were starting to gather at gravesides, raising big wreaths of flowers and lighting candles.
– my trip to Patzcuaro for el Día de los Muertos.
Read the rest of that visit here.
The pic above is a (never-before-revealed!) picture of my travel buddies at the time getting some food on the island at about 3am. The stone street whose steps we are sitting on is the one that winds all the way up the island to its peak.
Had a good Halloween, too. The knifeman brought the party, like he does every single year. Some unexpected faces there too, great to see them. Mostly I like Halloween. My reservations are entirely due to the fact it doesn’t quite fit here in NZ – the time of year is all wrong, for a start – and it isn’t integrated into our culture in any meaningful way. There’s a lot of suspicion, in particular, as to this “trick or treat” business where children proceed from house to house and ask for sweets! AND THEY DON’T EVEN NEED TO WORK FOR THEM! The logic of trick or treating is founded in ritual, not production-based education, and that’s a bit of a hard sell around these parts – we’re leery of the rituals we do own, and adopting new ones doesn’t come easy. Nevertheless, I like trick or treating in principle. If you want to bind communities together and encourage neighbourliness, dressing little kids as monsters and giving them treats seems like a pretty fun way to do it.
Then again, I mostly learned about Halloween from Peanuts. “I got a rock.”